The present invention is directed to the formulation of aqueous buffer solutions for use with ion exchange amino acids analysis systems and, more particularly for use with systems incorporating stainless steel components. In the instance of amino acid analysis systems, designed for achieving separations by ion exchange chromatography, it is usual to utilize special and quite expensive stainless materials such as Carpenter 20 and Inconel in order to withstand the corrosive composition of the conventional buffer solutions. Dedicated ion exchange amino acids analysis instruments are usually very sophisticated, expensive and, therefore not widely available. HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) instruments, on the other hand, are relatively inexpensive, widely available and are also used for amino acid analysis by so called reverse phase methods. In general the reverse phase methods are not as satisfactory as ion exchange methods; which are used to establish the standard for all other methods. Because components of the HPLC systems such as pumps, sample injectors, motorized valves, chromatography columns and so on are similar to those in an ion exchange chromatography instrument, there have been many attempts to incorporate an ion exchange column in an HPLC instrument so that it could be used to perform the classic Moore & Stein amino acid analysis. It was quickly discovered that the conventional buffers for ion exchange chromatography rapidly attacked the stainless steel components of HPLC systems not only shortening the life of the components but also, because of the resulting metal ions, rapidly spoiling the performance of the ion exchange resins. A number of attempts to overcome this problem by eliminating from the buffer solutions constituents, such as chloride ions, known to be corrosive to stainless steel have been described in the literature and, in one instance is commercially available. Unfortunately, while corrosion was eliminated the overall chromatographic performance of these buffers is not equal to the chloride containing buffers used in the dedicated ion exchange amino acid analysis systems and, therefore, the users need for performance equivalent to that of a dedicated ion exchange amino acid analyser is not met.